Thursday, April 19, 2012

A foolish attack on Jon Stewart

Jon Stewart recently did a brilliant take-down of the Republican war on women; I have embedded the segment at the top of this post. The Catholic League and other conservative organizations are now calling Stewart misogynistic.

The Catholic League is run by a fellow named Bill Donohue. When you want an expert opinion as to what constitutes misogyny, your first step should always be to contact a guy named Bill.

He'll make the call for you, sweeties.

This is just the beginning. Over the next several weeks, we will contact every major Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Mormon and Muslim leader and organization in the nation; they will be sent the picture, along with Stewart’s remarks. We will contact Viacom (which owns Comedy Central, home to “The Daily Show”) making sure that all board members and senior management know about Stewart’s anti-Christian and grossly misogynist attack. We will take out ads in newspapers, etc. We are not going away.
What Jon Stewart did ranks with the most vulgar expression of hate speech ever aired on television. His incivility cannot go unanswered.

Vulgar? Maybe. But Stewart's segment hardly qualifies as hate speech. If you want hate speech, just turn on the radio and listen to any right-winger. Donohue said nothing about either hate or misogyny when Ted Nugent said that Hillary Clinton could "take a ride" on his machine gun.

Did Donahue cry "misogyny" when Family Guy, a Fox show, did an extended bit in which Lois was beaten nearly to death then tossed into a lake by her husband and child, who were laughing uproariously the whole time? No. Apparently, there was nothing misogynistic about that. (Fox News gives Bill a lot of airtime.)

I wonder if Bill will have much success getting rabbis to rally to his cause. Vis-a-vis Passion of the Christ (directed by Mel Gibson, whom Donohue considers heroic even though Gibson built a schismatic church), the head of the Catholic League said the following:

Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular. It's not a secret, OK? And I'm not afraid to say it.